Against White Feminism

[Allycott]

Yesterday I heard an interview with the author of this book. I listened to her views and rationale for writing the book.

Has anyone read it?

@LobsterNapkin

No, it's sodium bicarb and tartaric acid. It's single action, however.

Interesting - so I was always under the impression that this is what baking powder included here in Canada, and that was double acting. But I guess ours isn't cream of tartar at all.

There are different heat response of acids in baking (McGee discusses this and I think the other link does. I find the topic fascinating but should stop my [merail])…

Is the book approximately relevant to women in Canada? Or, are there some points of correspondence but overall too many differences to be wholly relevant?

Are male led campaigns for racial equality reminded that the oppression of black women is important and should be on their agendas? If not, they should be.

@newrubylane

"People claim it is reflective more of a state of mind than skin colour; even Pragna Patel, a founding member of Southall Black Sisters, has been accused of being a “white feminist.”

This strikes me as bordering on offensive - to imply that someone isn't black just because they have a different politics to you. And also has a weird parallel with the 'boy likes pink therefore he must be a girl' thinking.

Are we now race-transing woman who don't toe the political line? Will the reverse then become true; will a white woman who isn't a 'white feminist' be able to be considered 'black', despite never having experienced any of the prejudices that actual black women face?

In the interview, she either said or implied (would have to re-listen to check) that Priti Patel wasn’t really a woman of colour, because of being part of white power structures. So I think that the author was arguing that women of colour can be white feminists.

She was also quite unclear on what she wanted - the example of a white, female Chair of a board taking the position rather than offering it up to a woman of colour came up twice, but nothing else very specific

What if the woman of colour came from a professional family and was privately educated, and the white woman came from a family where no one went to university and she'd grown up with poverty and the adversity of various types that goes with it? Looking at structures at a population level can tell us very little about an individual.

The feminism that I've been involved in for 30 years isn't perfect, but it has involved women from different backgrounds coming together. Maybe that's not so much the case at an academic or "professional" level (I don't know), but it certainly has been in projects on the ground.

In the interview, she either said or implied (would have to re-listen to check) that Priti Patel wasn’t really a woman of colour, because of being part of white power structures. So I think that the author was arguing that women of colour can be white feminists.

That sounds very like the No True Scotsman fallacy, doesn't it?

Quote from the book, given in the review:
“An aversion to acknowledging lived trauma permeates white feminism, which in turn produces a discomfort and alienation from women who have experienced it.”
What the fuck? How can the author not know that this is utter bollocks? She is either off-the-scale ignorant, or, um, inventive.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions, the thing I miss about the US is shortening, though probably if I knew what was in it, I'd no longer buy it. But it did make pastry making an absolute doddle.

There are different heat response of acids in baking (McGee discusses this and I think the other link does. I find the topic fascinating but should stop my [merail])…

Is the book approximately relevant to women in Canada? Or, are there some points of correspondence but overall too many differences to be wholly relevant?

I am appreciating the chemistry stuff, it's always nice to learn something new which you thought you already knew about!

Canada is probably more similar to the US in terms of the history of the people who live there. It's really only in the War of Independence that you can even think about the countries development separately - a lot of Canada's early black population were in fact loyalists who came from what had become the US, and were settled into land grants, though there were certainly also some other people of African origin too. But the black loyalists in general would have been slaves or poor and so many of their descendants today connect with that history and also with that culture - most are Baptists, for example.

On the other hand, we never had the slave economy of the southern US, the number of black Canadians was never anything like the US where you have cities and states with a significant % of the people who are black, and our laws followed the British laws. Culturally, for a long time Canada was more British and European in its associations than American, however this changed markedly with the EU, the Commonwealth becoming less important, and American tv and music becoming dominant. This older black population has many of the same problems associated with the American population, including being poor, bad relations with police, etc, though I think our better social safety net has helped.

We've also had the same inundation of identity politics as the UK has coming from across the border, including all the less savoury parts, applied to black population and native peoples. At first glance it does seem like it would be a better fit here because of the shared history, but in the end, I don't think it is. It still seems to impose a narrow and sometimes even bizarre lens on our own history, a deliberate (or deliberately ignorant) massaging to fit the narrative.

But - I think that happens in the US too, which is why you have historians critising the 1619 project as being a-historical.

Oh dear...!

Judging by her tweets, Zakaria is only 13, so I must congratulate her on already having written a book at her age.

Blimey she's nasty. Presumably she's slagging off other women because she's run out of Pakistani feminist issues to work on as feminism has been so successful there...

She's currently losing it on twitter. Petulance, childishness, and abuse:

twitter.com/rafiazakaria/status/1437145213420589060

Having made a fool of herself in that tweet she's currently continuing her witless fight in the replies.

What an advert for intersectional liberal feminism.

@TabbyStar

Oh dear...!

I would have absolutely no idea of how to engage with someone who could write that. The pivot from the misunderstanding of 'pol' as pale to blonde as showcasing JS' primacy of whiteness.

And the escalation is beyond absurd. RZ is now asking JS if JS is threatening her and is simultaneously relying upon her own skills as a lawyer and confidence in her understanding of Twitter terms to protect her.

I'm a fan of Rafia Zakaria; I've read her column in DAWN for 10+ years. I was really happy to see that she had a book of her own coming out.

I don't love the "white feminism" trope, because I think that it doesn't work across cultures - "black" in America is different from black everywhere else, because of the history. People should be respectful of US history when writing about race in the US. An outsider does not get to decide which Americans are black or not black, as Zakaria does. It's not OK that she says that black Americans like Alfre Woodward, Sidney Potier, and Condoleezza Rice are not black. That's not her choice.

I still wanted to read her book and I hoped it would be a little bit more global than the US-focused - and therefore not inaccurate, but of limited use - works of authors like Koa Beck and Miki Kendall or Ruby Ahmad who - and I don't fault them for it - focused only on the USA.

However, I'm sorry to say, Rafia's book isn't good. She doesn't shed light on race like Beck or Kendall or Ahmad. And her rush to capitalise on the US pullout from Afghanistan to tell lies about feminism on her really bad and inaccurate article in The Nation isn't good either.

If someone defending here here liked the book - please tell us specifically what it added to what was already in the public domain?

I was just looking at the Twitter spat. Well, cringing really. Have to assume the book is equally terrible.

She's calling people Karen's now. There will be a piece in Slate next week about a racist attack on her in the right wing press with a white supremacist threatening her.

What a pathetic woman.

I've never heard of her but he behaviour on Twitter is embarrassing. I hope her agent or publisher or a friend comes and pulls the plug on her internet because she's not covering herself in glory.

It still seems to impose a narrow and sometimes even bizarre lens on our own history, a deliberate (or deliberately ignorant) massaging to fit the narrative.

Thank you, that's helpful.

I can see how the author might be disappointed that her book is not particularly relevant outside the context of the US but that is such a huge market and she was reviewed positively there.

Reading around, I was surprised to see RZ set aside Susan B Anthony's history as an abolitionist in the context of her decision to oppose suffrage for more men but no women in amendments 14 and 15. I was unaware of Anthony's dispute with Douglass over the gradual approach to emancipation.

susanb.org/abolitionist/

skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/41112/did-susan-b-anthony-make-these-statements-regarding-suffrage-for-women-and-form

However, the more I learn about US history, the more I know that I'm in no position to comment on its complexities.

Woody Holton's recent Liberty Is Sweet offers:

A sweeping reassessment of the American Revolution, showing how the Founders were influenced by overlooked Americans—women, Native Americans, African Americans, and religious dissenters.

www.amazon.co.uk/Liberty-Sweet-History-American-Revolution-ebook/dp/B08VJM5G1D/?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Well, if you were missing Naomi Wolf, we may have found her replacement.

Goodness. Twitter is grim sometimes.

There's money to be made in pissing on white women these days. Hence why there's all these books being published in the US and UK. As long as there's sufficient numbers of women who are easily manipulated into feeling guilty about anything and everything, you can sell them insults and put downs packaged as 'intersectional feminism'.

Clearly lots of white women have enough self-respect to not fall for this junk, so now the concept of 'white feminism' has to be expanded to cover women who are not white. It's a way to squeeze a bit more money out of a larger market of people.

It's a fashionable trend that obviously won't last forever, so the aim is to make as much as money as possible while the timing is ripe - that's what all the books and diversity trainings are for - raking in the money while enjoying the power trip that comes with being able to be nasty to other human beings with impunity. It's not an area that requires actual intelligence, just a nose for selling snake oil. You can tell by the calibre of people drawn to it.

I would never post on Black Mumsnetters as that’s not my place, but if anyone from there is reading, I’d be particularly interested in knowing what you think. Or if anyone else can link to a more positive take on this book. I do try to avoid echo chambers, and clearly this is a book that has spoken to a lot of people, and I’d like to understand more about why that is and the points that it makes.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions

This is a total thread diversion but back in the 1970s my aunt wrote the first book about how to do pattern cutting using metric measurements. It went on to become a standard textbook.

Her publishers years later asked her to do an Imperial version for the American market which she said was kind of ironic! But she had to explain that it wasn't as simple as putting the measurements through a Google converter, she would have to redo the whole book from scratch. So it never got written.

I think accusing POC of effectively being white or benefit from white privilege is a great way to divide and conquer as it paints those POC as race traitors.

If the movement has a single unifying feature it is an analysis of the way oppression of women is linked to female bodies, regardless of race, class, age, religion or sexual orientation.

Precisely why genderism is so harmful - it ignores this unifying aspect.

So many of these "social justice" movements are now aimed at just identifying "in" and "out" groups rather than actually achieving anything concrete for anyone.

So you'll see demands that Labour should adopt "defund the police" as a slogan despite the fact that it's taken from a completely different political context and apparently doesn't even mean "defund the police". I've been told that it's up to me to educate myself so that I understand the words don't mean what they purport to mean.

Any suggestion that it might be better to come up with a slogan that people can actually understand is yet another example of "white privilege".